What I Wish I'd Told the NY Post

A brief addendum

From: NY Post. Cool to share an image with the venerable Fr. Josiah Trenham!

This morning, the New York Post columnist Rikki Schlott published a piece about Orthodoxy and its draw for young men in particular. I was expecting its publication because I was interviewed for it!

My story leads off the piece along with photographs of me around the house, with my dogs, etc. (I have never done something like this, and it is at once flattering and cringe-inducing to be presented in this way.) While the broad strokes of the piece are correct, and I stand by it, I want to clarify a couple of points where I may have not presented things as clearly as I could’ve.

First and foremost, I take no pleasure in declining church membership and the “hemorrhaging” of some mainline denominations (though I look quite smug with some of these photos and captions juxtaposed!) In truth, all Christian churches are in various states of decline, and the difference is really just relative.

What I was trying to get at, perhaps imperfectly, is that I know many young people who have “deconstructed” their faith because they felt that if they didn’t like praise-and-worship bands or believe the earth was 6,000 years old or find their church to be “feeding them” sufficiently, then they couldn’t be a Christian.

As a friend of mine noticed, a lot of this deconstruction also can become an overcorrection against purity culture and justification for sexual license (see: Joshua Harris’ apology tour for I Kissed Dating Goodbye.) Since the Church is out-of-step with cultural norms, if there isn’t a coherent vision for ascetisicm and sexuality, then resentment for what feels like arbitrary strictures seeps in and the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater.

Orthodoxy offers rigor, explanation, and direction for the pursuit of Christian virue.

Schlott glossed this with: “Conversion means that he now must frequently attend confession, recite prescribed prayers, and endure extreme fasting, sometimes over 40-day stretches. Weekly services are also highly ritualized and regimented, and can last up to two hours.”

Though I wouldn’t have put it quite this dramatically, the point I was trying to make is that Orthodoxy has an aspirational component called theosis. There is an explicit goal that over the course of your life, you should be growing closer to and more like God. This is accomplished in part through participation in the life of the Church (including confession, fasts, ritualized services, and various ascetic practices).

One analogy I’ve heard is that some forms of Christianity are like a pool. You can reasonably get your arms around what’s required of you, what the tradition is, etc. Orthodoxy is like the ocean. It’s vast, deep, and the horizon seems to always recede even as you progress. Thus St. Sisoes says on his deathbed, “I do not think that I have even begun to repent.”

To some that would be discouraging. To me, and other like-minded converts, this feels vibrant, challenging, and exciting. We don’t want to be told, “You’re perfect just the way you are.” We know we aren’t, and we want help.

While Schlott’s summary misses some of the niceties of the Episcopal/Anglican distinction, it’s clear that both churches have changed a fair amount in just my lifetime. And this is part of a broader pattern for young adults, whose entire lives have been characterized by “unprecedented” change.

Donald Trump is an “unprecendented” politician, yet every time I’ve voted, he’s been the Republican nominee. Social media and the internet are “unprecendented” in their reshaping of society, yet I’ve never known a world without them. Given all this, Orthodoxy can feel like a small island of stability. That doesn’t make it true, but it does make it appealing!

What I didn’t get into at all with Schlott was the “woo.” Yes, the Divine Liturgy has gravitas and tradition and all of that, and like many people, I appreciate it. But when I think back to my early days attending, the appeal was far simpler.

I had gone the Sunday prior to a relatively liberal Episcopal service, one where there was great care to ensure gender neutral pronouns were used throughout the liturgy, and the sermon didn’t feel particularly Christian. Then, as we began the prayer before communion, the celebrant unexpectedly chanted the opening line: “The Lord be with you.”

Hearing that one line, sung in a traditional tone, moved me. It felt like a glimpse into a different way of worshiping, one that I desperately wanted more of.

And then I went to Divine Liturgy, and the whole service felt like that one moment extended to two hours instead of five seconds. The words, the melodies—I got chills for months every time we sang the Beatitudes. It feels ridiculous to write that, but it’s true.

Here’s how a tenth century visitor to St. Sophia described the experience: “We knew not whether we were in heaven or earth. For on earth there is no such splendour and beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We only know that there God dwells among men.”

This isn’t everyone’s experience and not every Orthodox Church is the same. But when

Paul Kingsnorth

talks about going to Liturgy and getting “hooked,” I know exactly what he means.

All that to say, I hold no ill will against any Christian group. My one hope with doing this little interview was that it might encourage the small subset of people who would find Orthodoxy to be a spiritual lifeline (like I did) but don’t know much about it, think it’s too strange, or think it’s not for Americans. Look at my normie icon corner—you could do this too!

I told Schlott that in my experience, people think Orthodox means Greek Orthodox and Greek Orthodox means My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Until fairly recently, it wasn’t really a live option in the West, and there remains a fair amount of misconceptions about it. I just want to spread the word.

If I have offended, my apologies. If I have encouraged, glory to God.